By Steve Levy
I have lived in this nation for 66-plus years and it wasn’t until this year that I heard a full-length commercial on regular TV broadcast entirely in Spanish. Should I be embarrassed or ashamed that I actually cringed when I heard it?
I know the politically correct response would be that I welcomed this new exhibition of diversity. We are, after all, a melting pot and must be tolerant of each other’s differences, be it race, religion, or language.
It wasn’t that I was worried that white culture was diminishing or that more non-whites were gaining prominence in the country. Immigrants, white, black, brown and everything in between, built this nation into a colossus.
It was more that I felt that we were morphing into what Canada experienced with its English/French bilingualism.
I get that the commercial’s producer, Optimum, is a private company that has every right to run the ad in any language it chooses. I’ll defend their right to do it. But just because they have a right to do it, does it mean it’s a good idea? It might be good for short-term profits, but not so healthy long-term for the country.
First, it’s commercials, then it’s street signs, then it’s telephone answering services. (As for street signs, why aren’t states demanding that commercial drivers pass an English proficiency test?)
Maybe I’m too lazy or too busy to have to sit through a repetition of a recorded message in one or two other languages. Or maybe I’m concerned that moving away from English as a unifier could possibly inhibit assimilation, which was the key to making the melting pot so successful in America, while it succeeded much less in the ghettoized partitions within Europe.
When it comes to English-only legislation, I can see the matter from both sides. We became a great nation by welcoming people from all over the world. We had no caste systems here in America (with slavery being a clear and reprehensible exception). Immigrants from Little Italy, Chinatown, and the Jewish ghetto were all speaking different languages and living in different cultures, without an English-only law. But back then, we held onto our individual heritages with pride, yet nevertheless subordinated them to the overriding theme of becoming Americans first..
Many immigrant families forced their children to learn English so that they could assimilate easily and enhance their opportunities to move up the socioeconomic ladder.
First- and second-generation members on my mother‘s Italian side of the family would never think of supporting Italy once World War II broke out. Once they hit our shores, they were Americans through and through.
But things have changed. Despite most Muslim immigrants being loyal, patriotic Americans and fine neighbors, a startling poll showed that 44% of those immigrants maintain a positive outlook on Hamas, a terrorist organization that is a sworn enemy of America. New immigrants were also a driving force in pushing communists such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and members of “The Squad” into office. Contrast that to the virulently anti-communist positions of past generation immigrants, such as those who fled Cuba.
We also have a much different scenario that is developing as to how immigrants view the social services network once they arrive here. In the past, immigrants either needed a sponsor who would take care of them, or they knew that they were on their own to work hard and provide for their families.
But more recently, immigrants were encouraged to cross our border illegally, tempted with free housing, phones, college tuition and healthcare. In other words, in past generations, immigrants helped build our railroads and electric infrastructure, while today a large percentage of them are becoming wards of the state.
It seems like I’ve gone far afield from my original question as to whether I should feel guilty about cringing over a Spanish-language commercial, but somehow I think it’s all related.
How’s this for a compromise? Continue to welcome immigrants through a legal process that properly vets the newcomers for economic self-sufficiency and loyalty to our nation. All the while, we can revel in our amazing diversity and pride in heritage, we can still come together over common denominators, such as pride in our American flag and a commitment to maintain English as a unifying factor to avoid the type of balkanization that has developed elsewhere.